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Thomas J. Andrews
Thomas J. Andrews
Title: Executive Vice President and Regional Market Director, Greater Boston, Alexandria Real Estate Equities
Age: 57
Experience: 29 years
Alexandria Real Estate Equities owns more than 6 million square feet of life science properties in Greater Boston, or approximately one-third of its national portfolio, but it still has room to grow. The Pasadena, California REIT acquired the Metropolitan Pipe & Supply Co. property in Cambridge’s Kendall Square this spring for $80.25 million and is drawing up plans for the life science mecca’s latest major lab complex. Alexandria also is testing the suburban market’s demand for additional life science space, as it converts two floors of office space to labs at 266-275 Second Ave. in Waltham after acquiring the property in July for $70.7 million. Tom Andrews leads the company’s Greater Boston operations including development of the 2.6-million-square-foot Alexandria Center at Kendall Square campus.
Q: What prompted your transition from the hospitality industry to commercial real estate?
A: I went to Cornell’s hospitality school as an undergrad and my first job, very ironically, was running the cafeteria at the Volpe Center in Kendall Square. After moving out of state briefly, I got a master’s degree at MIT in the real estate program. I wrote my master’s thesis on development of medical research space, and met a bunch of people when I was doing that. Then I hooked up with the Worcester Business Development Corporation, which was developing the first purpose-built biotech research park in the country next to UMass Medical School. I worked on that for 11 years as a project manager and later as a director. So my life science experience goes back almost 30 years ago.
Q: What was the Kendall Square real estate market like then?
A: The industry was very young and there wasn’t a lot of space in the market at all. There were a few suburban buildings and a handful of properties in Cambridge, including ones in Kendall Square developed by David Clem. Alexandria had been formed in 1994 on the West Coast and went public in 1997. I joined them in 1999. When I joined as regional director and the first person on the ground for the company, we started strategizing how to build out the region and started buying principally suburban properties for a few years. Our big entry into the market was in 2006, when we acquired the 1.2-million-square-foot Tech Square campus from MIT. At that point, we started the additional acquisitions and bought a bunch of stuff around Binney Street, and sites for future development.
Q: Which of Alexandria’s local projects changed the most from conception to completion?
A: When we bought the Athenaeum building in Cambridge it was really a class B partially-renovated office building. It needed a lot of work. After we got our hands on that, we figured out some interesting strategies for putting lab space in that building and really making it into a class A repurposed building.
We struck a deal with Third Rock Ventures to give them a priority first look at the spaces as we were renovating and ended up with a number of Third Rock-funded companies going into that building. It had a parking lot that was a great development site, at 50 and 60 Binney. I wouldn’t say the building was an afterthought, but we were really trying to get our hands on that land.
Q:What was your strategy as you completed the lease-up of 100 Binney St., including Facebook?
A: We were holding out for a while for someone to take all of the balance in one swoop. (Bristol-Myers Squibb leased 208,000 square feet in 2015.) We had a couple of tenants where we went to a letter of intent, and those deals went sideways for various reasons. When we finally decided to break up the five floors and lease it floor by floor, we quickly engaged with Facebook at that point.
Q: What are your plans for the Metropolitan Pipe property in Kendall Square?
A: We’ve definitely stayed in touch with them over the years and they historically were not interested in selling, because they’re operating their business there. Finally they decided to relocate in Somerville and that freed up the properties. I’m not going to handicap what the ultimate density will be on the site. We really have to have discussions with the neighborhood and city and we’re just getting going. Our intention is to build a lab-capable building on that site, and probably some ground-floor retail and active uses. We think it’s a very visible and prominent site facing Amgen’s building across the street. There’s a city-owned park in front of it and ultimately that rail line is going to have a bike trail on it.
Andrews’ Favorite Irish links Courses:
- Royal County Down
- Ballybunion – Old Course
- Tralee
- Waterville
- Rosses Point
